The war filled more and more space in the daily papers. But there was no news of the Rainbow Division, with which it was believed Barton and the other young officers from Mailsburg had sailed. Everything was so secretly done! There was the story that sifted back from France to the families of some of the soldiers of the unit from the West, who thought they were bound for New York by train, but who found themselves alighting in New Orleans and going aboard the troop ships there, to sail for southern France by the way of Gibraltar. The fact that the country was honeycombed by German and Austrian spies, and by those whom the enemy’s money could buy, was becoming slowly a settled conviction, even in Mailsburg. Those of German birth and name would in time be ostracised. It could not be helped. It was in the nature of things. The man who in war time calls himself too broad-minded to hate the enemy is often one who has not yet awakened to the seriousness of war. The enemy-alien in our midst should tremble for his personal safety. Otherwise he becomes a menace. Just off Burnaby Street was a little shop where, ever since Ethel was a child, had sat a little old German cobbling shoes. He was a marked character in this part of the town where the residents were mostly of the old, native American stock. Somebody has said that the trade of tailor breeds socialists and pessimists. So being a cobbler used to breed philosophers of a kindly sort. Gessler had been wont to hand out bits of homely and comfortable philosophy with his mended shoes. The war had changed his attitude toward life, it seemed. Until the United States had got into it he had talked eagerly with everybody who would listen. The Kaiser he hated, for he was a “Prussian, arrogant and brutal.” “My father used always to say that there would be war if that bloodhound came to the throne!” he frequently said. But he likewise was proud of his race. “The whole world is fighting them and can’t beat them already!” he cried. Now that his adopted country was arraigned against the fatherland, Gessler was very glum and silent. He did not have so much work as before; but he sat all day on his cobbler’s bench, his hammer in his hand, often staring out of the window with empty eyes. On her way to work one morning Ethel carried a pair of shoes to be mended. But when she reached the corner in sight of which the little German’s shop stood, she hesitated. How could she approach Gessler and speak to him with that pleasant familiarity that had been her custom. She could think of him only now as an enemy. Every German was an enemy! His countrymen in their terrible undersea craft might sink the transport upon which Frank Barton had sailed. The war had come home to Ethel Clayton! It was real to her at last, as it becomes real to everybody who has a personal stake in it. She took the shoes to another cobbler and went on her way to the office.